It’s not a demon, exactly. It’s just another person. And I don’t like it. Faith is just Faith. Not Faith and Buffy or Faith and Angel. I’ve tried those, and they don’t work. So now it’s just Faith and whoever the person is.

Of course it would happen to a slayer.

After I lost control of my body again—god, I only had it for seconds—the other-me, whoever that might be, started trying to look inside shop windows. I wasn’t sure why—maybe the other-me wanted to see who I was, maybe they were just as damn desperate as I was—or maybe I wasn’t even Faith anymore, maybe I was just another person. Maybe I’d died. I wouldn’t put it past Buffy to do such a thing.

And that’s when a person came up to me. Well, I wasn’t in control of my body. The alter ego apparently didn’t know that the Mayor had died. That I was on the run from the law. You see, when you’re in a deadly-looking coma, you’re still alive. You can hear. You can smell. I guess that you’d be able to taste, but they wouldn’t feed you. But you can’t open your damn eyes. After a while, it gets boring. You start trying to wake up. You can feel your heart beating faster and then suddenly it just happens.

And you’re not in the coma anymore.

So when the five-year-old girl asked my alter ego who I was, they quickly answered, “Sirius Black.”

I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like something out of a book. Not that I read at all. Sounded like something that Willow Rosenberg would read.

Come on. That’s when it happened. It was like going down a slide, except you were going upwards. And I was back into my body, whatever or whoever that was. “Just kidding,” I said happily. “My name’s Faith.”

“Are you okay?” the girl asked.

I sighed. “Five by five.”

I looked in a shop window just to see my reflection, but I was positive that the girl thought I was insane because it was the magic shop, and of course the front display window had a bunch of knives used to kill demons. Go figure.

I had to back away because I saw the knife that Buffy had bloody killed me with.

Wait? Why the hell did I just say bloody? That sounds like Giles. Or even better, Wesley. Is that bloody Sirius bloke British?

Hell yeah he is. I just said bloody and bloke in one thought. Siriusly, Sirius, get out of my head. Is that his bad joke? Or am I just going bloody crazy?

Stick with it, Faith. You are Faith. Faith doesn’t say bloody. Or bloke. Faith is American and proud of it.

You are Sirius Black, too. I was Lily and James Potter’s best friend through school. I was blamed for turning them in and also blamed for killing thirteen people with one curse. I went to Azkaban prison for twelve years and then I broke out. I was fighting Bellatrix Lestrange who is extremely evil before I fell through a piece of cloth and ended up here. And Sirius Black? He’s British and proud of it.

God.

I was either extremely bipolar, or some Sirius dude was actually stuck inside me. I needed some serious mental help, and the first person I would go to would be the Mayor. But no. The mayor was dead. He died becoming some bloody demon.

Your boss was evil?

Yep, Sirius. My boss was very evil. And proud of it.

Cool. Can I kill him?

Nope. He’s already dead.

Bloody hell.

Whoa, you Brits actually say that? That’s so bloody-hell cool!

Back to business, Faith. The only person I could think of that could actually help me was Giles. Or Willow, or—okay, not Xander—or Buffy, maybe or Wesley if he hadn’t left, or Angel. God, why had I ditched them all for some demon dude?

So go talk to them. Trust me. It will work. I got my godson to trust me after believing I’d murdered his parents.

Good to know, Sirius. But decent advice too, really. I should go talk to them. Maybe they’ll welcome me back with open arms. But if you somehow get control of MY bloody body, then please don’t say your name is Sirius Black.

Anything else?

Blondie who tries to beat you up is Buffy. Redhead is Willow. Ugly dude is Xander. Old guy is Giles.

Finishing the awkwardly weird conversation inside of myself, I set off down the street to Giles’s house, where I knew that I would probably be beaten up into shreds. But I might also find salvation, and I was going to take my chances.